Introduction to the Special Issue on the Statistical Mechanics of Climate

We introduce the special issue on the Statistical Mechanics of Climate published on the Journal of Statistical Physics by presenting an informal discussion of some theoretical aspects of climate dynamics that make it a topic of great interest for mathematicians and theoretical physicists. In particular, we briefly discuss its nonequilibrium and multiscale properties, the relationship between natural climate variability and climate change, the different regimes of climate response to perturbations, and critical transitions.